Slashdot Mirror
Man Emails AT&T's CEO, Gets Threatened With C&D Order
An anonymous reader writes "After its recent bait and switch, AT&T went ahead and threatened someone emailing the company CEO about customer service concerns, namely with a query about tethering and eligibility rates. The email author also put up a voicemail recording of the company's response and how he managed to contact the CEO in the first place — through The Consumerist." As Engadget notes (as does the complaining customer's updated page), AT&T did at least offer an apology for the threat of legal action, which the company says was unauthorized.
Is Comcast that bad?
Are they that bad? Well, lets see. The last time I had them, I had no internet service for 3 days. After repeated calls and a tech coming out I got no resolution. Finally I took it upon myself to install a packet sniffer, and what do you know...all of the IP traffic on my subnet was in an entirely different range than the IP I was being assigned. I picked a random IP in the valid range that appeared to not be in use and statically assigned it, and *mysteriously* every was suddenly working. I had to wade through first level tech support, convince them to let me talk to a network engineer (because he had no clue what I was talking about), and then tell that guy how to fix my internet service.
Then there is the billing department. The bill is conveniently itemized so that you can see the comcast charges, and then separate entries for the franchise fees, city taxes, universal service fees, etc. Comcast raised the bill by exactly $1 with absolutely no mention in any of my previous 6 bills about a coming change. That $1 increase was in the line item for the comcast charge. Yet when I spoke to the billing department, they were insistent that they absolutely did not raise the rate on me, and that the increased charge was solely due to city taxes. Even showing them my previous bill and pointing out exactly where the increase occurred could not budge them. They blatantly lied to me, and continued to lie even when shown evidence that they were clearly lying.
Now, compare that to WOW, where I can personally email the CTO directly about a problem, and he'll happily respond with a technical answer, and even admit fault if something went wrong on their end. Or with the install techs, who routinely show up in the first 30 minutes of the 4 hour service window, instead of the last hour (or even after the 4 hour window). And those techs are always willing to chat with me about how much better WOW treats them and makes it easier to do their job.
yeah, comcast is that bad. I kind of feel bad for the comcast guys that come around to my door every now and then trying to get me to switch back. They probably feel like I treat them as if they're carrying the plague or something, as I won't even humor them to listen to their sales pitch. I'm very polite in declining to hear their offer (I know the guys going door to door really have nothing to do with my experiences), but they always act like they've never seen someone so dissatisfied with a company before.